Seasonal Prediction of Hydro-Climatic Extremes in the Greater Horn of Africa under Evolving Climate Conditions to Support Adaptation Strategies

Tsegaye Tadesse, climatologist and remote sensing expert at UNL’s National Drought Mitigation Center, is leading a three-year, $1.6 million, multi-institution NASA-funded project to help predict drought and flood in the Greater Horn of Africa. UNL’s portion of the total award is $987,767. The project began in 2014.

Researchers will investigate which prediction methods work best for the Greater Horn, especially in light of an evolving climate, and will work with decision makers to produce seasonal forecasts that they can use. Droughts and floods can have devastating impacts in the region, even when early warning systems are in place. In 2010, drought caused widespread famine that affected 11.5 million people, even though forecasters had predicted the drought well in advance.

The research team will work with local representatives of disaster relief and food security agencies, extension agents, the Famine Early Warning System and others to see what type of forecasts would be most useful. Researchers will focus on developing forecasts at time and space scales that correspond to decision makers’ needs. They will also see whether existing tools will allow them to go beyond predicting a wetter season than usual to anticipating an extreme event such as a flood using ground observation and remote sensing information.

The researchers will also examine state-of-the-art techniques based on climatology, remote sensing, environmental modelling and other forecast methods that can provide early warning of drought or flood conditions. They will evaluate how well state-of-the-art seasonal forecast methods for drought and flood are working in the study region, and how they can help anticipate impacts on crops, communities and other aspects of life. One of the forecast techniques the researchers will evaluate is the satellite and climate-based Vegetation Outlook, or VegOut, an effort led by Tadesse.

Tadesse, who also helped develop the drought center’s Vegetation Drought Response Index (VegDRI), is collaborating on this NASA project with researchers from Johns Hopkins University, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, University of California-Santa Barbara’s Climate Hazard Group, the U.S. Geological Survey’s Earth Resources and Observation Science Center and Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, which is where the drought center is based.

Other UNL researchers are Guillermo Baigorria, School of Natural Resources and Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, Shimelis Beyene, Institute for Ethnic Studies and Department of Anthropology, Brian Wardlow, Center for Advanced Lance Management Information Technologies and School of Natural Resources, and Michael Hayes, drought center and School of Natural Resources.